Scrustle:Really? I'm being hateful? Well, whatever. Make up whatever you want. She did do those things though. I have made arguments against her which were based on the content of what she said, and never anything to do with her being a woman or the fact that she's trying to address an issue that does need addressing. I don't hate her. Nothing I've ever said has resembled anything like the disgusting bile that's been thrown her way, but she's hardly a "victim". Like Jim says, all it's done is make her stronger. But hey, if you want to strawman me to make yourself feel superior then go right ahead.

I would never say that you were being sexist against women, or that you had anything to do with the hate levelled at her when she started her kickstarter campaign. i'm sorry if that's how it came across. But to put what's happened to her in language such as 'trolled' and 'flaunted' you make your opinion about her very clear. And it is an opinion, because we can't know the ins and outs of what she's done and how she's used the extra publicity. I really don't think she engineered any of the harrassment, and I don't think she's trolled us at all, but that's my opinion. We're obviously never going to agree.

I think one of the points of the video was to say that the kind of criticisms you made of her (based on your opinion of her actions, in quite emotive language) can't really be made any more because of what's happened to her. We need to keep it factual, and based on her work, because to criticise how she handled the harassment really isn't classy.

Long story short, ignore the stupid bitch and she'll go away. I've been saying that all along. She's an idiot. She doesn't know what a true intellectual debate is. She doesn't know what real scientific research is. She ignores constructive criticism and talks only about people who are flaming her. She's a typical internet moron with delusions of grandeur and intelligence. Everything she does is so unscientific, it is almost a fuckin' religion. So just leave her alone with her delusional thoughts and ideas and move on to bigger and better things.

The whole situation confuses me.That flood of hate mail seemed to hit her almost simultaneously. Why then? Why all at once? What happened before her kickstarter to get her enough publicity to catch the eye of every troll & misogynist on the internet? She'd been doing her podcast for a while before now. Maybe I'm missing something here, but I don't understand how she caught all their attention so quickly.To top that off, why the rage at all? I've checked out her series; there's plenty to legitimately criticize. A simple response of disagreement would have been a much more constructive & successful approach. You might have found people agreeing with you, or maybe even learned something to change your own mind

When Bob Chipman created "The Game Antithinker" persona, he got a lot of venom spewed his way, with people saying such a character was a gross over exaggeration, and that gamers are a higher class of people these days. We certainly didn't show that in this particular fiasco, did we? Dabbling with XBL myself, I can say Bob was being generous in his view of the more unseemly crowd gaming has to offer. The response Anita got from these people was so predictable it's sad. Being as obnoxious and loud as they are, these kinds of people are going to get more and more attention over the years, and I dare say things may actually get worse from here on, especially once onlookers start seeing all gamers like this.

The same thing can be said about Bob in this vid. He gets death threats on his blog once and awhile and it makes anyone who has any valid critisisms seem like the ones who send the death threats.

That it's the year 2012. We should have sorted out issues like that ten years ago and we still haven't. We chose to ignore it and now that some people have started to protest we try our hardest to shut them up because, you know, it's not like anyone wants to get out of his way to solve problems instead of just waiting till everyone forgets about them. No, women shouldn't be portrayed in games like they are now for a pretty big part and we all should be able to see this. Stubbornly saying "there is no problem" doesn't help anyone.

Also this. Sticking our collective heads in the sand about it just makes us all look dumb and out of touch.

Cause thats one of the games she's targeting. Theres also racers like NFS and Blur on her list and even LBP. Now people are going to wait for her vids to see if its worth getting her investigated for fraud(theres a lot of people that think she did this just to boost her game collection).

Personally, I wouldn't be suprised if she made some of the accounts that harrassed her so she can play victim.

why the hell she attack Persona 3? for wht possible reason is there id understand Visual Novels more then anything but theres a reason for it in them and that even tho they dont get translated much there are also VNs that are targeted for women so its not so bad in that respect, also i agree with you on the latter portion.

Zombie_Moogle:The whole situation confuses me.That flood of hate mail seemed to hit her almost simultaneously. Why then? Why all at once? What happened before her kickstarter to get her enough publicity to catch the eye of every troll & misogynist on the internet? She'd been doing her podcast for a while before now. Maybe I'm missing something here, but I don't understand how she caught all their attention so quickly.To top that off, why the rage at all? I've checked out her series; there's plenty to legitimately criticize. A simple response of disagreement would have been a much more constructive & successful approach. You might have found people agreeing with you, or maybe even learned something to change your own mind

From what I know, (from this video at least: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpFk5F-S_hI or it could have been the video before?) She had disable her comments for her two videos before. Her videos have also been hard to comment one, as she has only letting those comments that she want, to show. The Rumor that she also posted her videos link on 4chan could also helped the trolls to get to her video.

When Bob Chipman created "The Game Antithinker" persona, he got a lot of venom spewed his way, with people saying such a character was a gross over exaggeration, and that gamers are a higher class of people these days. We certainly didn't show that in this particular fiasco, did we? Dabbling with XBL myself, I can say Bob was being generous in his view of the more unseemly crowd gaming has to offer. The response Anita got from these people was so predictable it's sad. Being as obnoxious and loud as they are, these kinds of people are going to get more and more attention over the years, and I dare say things may actually get worse from here on, especially once onlookers start seeing all gamers like this.

Because a few comments is indicative of the entire internet. Right, forgot that this was The Escapist and thoughtless generalizations are common fare here. -_-

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,this is why we don't kick up a stink over natural things such as sex or religon. It'll just blow up in your face. In modern society that I've observed (Ontario),women are equal. On the internet...The presence of a Y chromosome makes you a target. Why can't people just...Grow up? On the internet,gender is just a frivolous formality. In games,gender exists as a single facet in the possibility of diversity. As a twenty year old male,I hold women in equal esteem as males...Because they're HUMAN before they're MALE OR FEMALE.

Also,I believe the women's rights debate ends when women achieve equal footing with men,no sooner,no later. No one is superior by birth.

Cause thats one of the games she's targeting. Theres also racers like NFS and Blur on her list and even LBP. Now people are going to wait for her vids to see if its worth getting her investigated for fraud(theres a lot of people that think she did this just to boost her game collection).

Personally, I wouldn't be suprised if she made some of the accounts that harrassed her so she can play victim.

why the hell she attack Persona 3? for wht possible reason is there id understand Visual Novels more then anything but theres a reason for it in them and that even tho they dont get translated much there are also VNs that are targeted for women so its not so bad in that respect, also i agree with you on the latter portion.

Well there are the "Battle Panties" in Persona 3, a piece of armor only the female characters can wear that put them in a skimpy outfit. Kinda immature. Also just because she calls out certain aspects of games for having sexist tones, does not mean she's condemning the entire game, or the people who play them.

I've said it before; all the backlash against her simply proves her point. Gamer culture still has a lot of growing up to do, and it's really pathetic.

I'm not really up to date on what games Sarkeesian is investigating, but I did notice footage of Pikmin in Jim's video. Is she really accusing Pikmin of sexism or was Jim just showing random video game clips?

Bullfrogg:I'm not really up to date on what games Sarkeesian is investigating, but I did notice footage of Pikmin in Jim's video. Is she really accusing Pikmin of sexism or was Jim just showing random video game clips?

Not random. It was chosen to coincide with the description I was giving in the dub.

The fire was kindled by gaming journalists too. Like, John Riccitiello and Bobby Kotick's names have been shat on rigorously by gamers during the last few years, right? But no valiant gaming journalists stepped in to disparage the criticisms towards them as trolling and hate speech. They're men and it's assumed they can handle it, yet not so with the women in gaming, who are immediately painted as victims.

And Sarkeesian never promoted debate. She completely suppresses criticism, both on her youtube channel and website, which was surefire recipe for the shit to start overflowing through channels beyond her control once she hit a nerve. And though she can endlessly go on about how she's "beating the trolls" and flaunt all the nice things gaming journalists said about her, to this day she completely ignores the one article on destructoid that had some criticism about her argumentation.

I find the idea that she was accused of milking her harassment for publicity funny because there's very, very little she wasn't accused of recently.

I like Anita. I don't think everything she's done was particularly well-researched (Her condemnation of the Powerpuff Girls being a big one.) but I suppose that's why she launched the kickstarter now, hmmm?

I really haven't met or talked to anyone that had the raging anti-woman vitriol that gave her so much publicity in the first place. I really don't understand what was behind their thought process, in any case.

She (Anita "Straw Feminist" Sarkeesian) knew that feminism is not popular. She knew she would have trolls, and she highlighted the worst of the trolls. She could have blocked the comments from the start if she wanted. I'm gone make it easy: We can't have an intellectuelll debate with Anita "Straw Feminist" Sarkeesian (her new name) because she don't want it. There would just not be some much hate aganst her if she was not a crybaby. She is a easy to hate Straw Feminist & Punchingbag.

But from what i know of my years of gaming all the way back to the Atari, there are games for everyone. Puzzle, story, strategy or fps. Ok, you may not have as many of your style made into games. But you have choice. An maybe you need to change from 360 to Wii or DS or whatever to get the most out of your chosen style of game.

I think a lot of people including you AND her are missing the point. Women don't want another genre of games or more story driven games. I like shooters, I like RPGs, I like action. We also don't want to live in a world where depictions of women are never sexy or evil. All female gamers want is a more equal playing field. There are plenty of popular games today with game universes in which women are completely non existent, much less playable female characters. I don't like having to play as a guy for every other game.I also don't like video games counting sex appeal as depth for female characters.Simple as that.That's all I want.

How would you guys feel if you had to play as a woman a lot of the time?

Oh and if it wasn't clear enough I don't agree with her.And thank god for Jim.

gardian06:before anyone says it. just because she "supposedly" went to 4chan, or maybe someone who knee jerked at her video did (more likely).

doesn't mean that she deserved the stupidity that resulted.

If she deserved it or not is irrelevant, the fact is that it worked in her favor.

CheckD3:Honestly, I agree and disagree with her. I support gender equality in games, but I don't support feminism. Why? I ask you this question. So feminism is okay, but racism is bad? They're both isms

Honestly, feminism makes me cringe too because of the structure of the word itself, not it's actual meaning.

But comparing it to racism is just a helluva long shot.

CrossLOPER:I guess people just got tired of making fat jokes in the 90s and early 00's and moved back to females.

It took exactly one post on this thread to rustle my jimmies.

These threads are getting so bad I can't even read the first page and keep my cool.

SonOfVoorhees:End of the day, death threats and rape threats are disgusting and just proves her right.

No. It doesn't.

It's like making a survey on racism and only including members of the Aryan Brotherhood. An improper test group means useless results.

SonOfVoorhees:End of the day. 99% of men know girls play games. Hell most of us have sisters that loved playing WonderBoy and Centipede. But most of this problem is certain teens boys thinking more female involvement will ruin there "manly" games. Which is pathetic. If anything more female involvement might give us more reason to play through a game for emotional reasons. [...] As i suspect the people bitching are lame ass teenagers.

Or young city-born yuppies tripping on guilt after a being in college.

Yes, it's pathetic. But assuming things just because you don't understand someone's opinions isn't the way to deal with it. If half of today's consumers of videogames are females, then "our manly games" (whatever that is supposed to mean) are suitable for both sexes. My problem isn't whatever they might try to shoehorn into gaming to please women (although anything that is shoehorned instead of honestly created is probably crap), it's the possibility of a "PC" movement being created in gaming.

I am not interested in any way on the "seriousness" or "artistic value" of videogames, but when political correctness starts crippling our games we can kiss goodbye any recognition we might have had.

Bwa-ha-ha! Absolutely right on, Jim. But given most of the recent gaming "controversies" of the last year or so, I have little faith in the average gamer's awareness of anything beyond his own petty hurt feelings. If only more so-called men would act like it instead of 7-year-old boys.

Minor mixed-metaphor nitpick at 5:18--You can't really "hang by your own petard". A petard is a bomb. The saying "hoist by his own petard" means "thrown into the air by his own explosive". You can be "hanged by your own rope" though.

RaikuFA:The same thing can be said about Bob in this vid. He gets death threats on his blog once and awhile and it makes anyone who has any valid critisisms seem like the ones who send the death threats.

If that's your interpretation of Bob's responses to his critics, I sincerely hope you're never called to jury duty. You'd probably send an innocent man to the electric chair.

5:43"This happens whenever someone has a problem with a woman working on videogames..."

You mean this?

I dont see why now all the arguments against Anita would be useless for the death threats and such, when it is clear that those were a vocal minority. The amount of people doing actual research to counter act the thing she saids is WAAAAAY more bast in proportion. But i guess that, once again, people are focusing on the minority like if they were the ALL the detractors.

It's bad enough people start saying hateful things to Anita over her project even if it's a scam but threatening to rape her is way crossing the line, like... if your parents or partner, or anyone you knew saw you posting that what would they think? Jeez......

Thank you Jim for covering this. If people just didn't give her attention she would of been a memory but because of all the outrage and refusal to stand down, she's getting so much publicity and perhaps fame. I think this also happened to that girl Rebecca who sang Friday, or I could be wrong about that. Still, the hatred people hold it's just. .. I don't even know. Like seriously people threatening her just baffles me, you guys (not all but-) are the ones who gave her money, way over her requested $6,000 limit. So yeah.

I called it right here: if she played/is going to play L.A. Noire I bet she will ignore the disclaimer at the start and whine about women getting slapped in the 1940's.

Falseprophet:If that's your interpretation of Bob's responses to his critics, I sincerely hope you're never called to jury duty. You'd probably send an innocent man to the electric chair.

The legal system isn't that simple.

AMorphine:How would you guys feel if you had to play as a woman a lot of the time?

But we also have to agree that there are situations in which women are non-existent. If Call of Duty had sequences in which the characters were in shore leave then they should better fill the cities with women. But most main characters in CoD have positions not available to women (such as grenadiers in the 75th Rangers or the SAS).

This is just an example. In games like Grad Theft Auto there is no particular reason for a man to be the main character, which is why I like Saints Row so much. I can be a muscular Sylvester Stallone and change into a fat woman at any time.

I see no harm in playing as a woman, and I wouldn't get tired of it. The problem is that I have seen that most developers suck at portraying females and either way they might handle the situation they are guaranteed to piss off 50% of the audience.

Even you said that you don't like the 1 inch deep female characters under the g-string armor. How would you like if every game was like that? I wouldn't. Rather have poorly written male characters than downright insulting female characters.

Typical of the internet, really. Anything someone disagrees with always turns to personal attacks and threats.

I have a feeling she knew this sort of shit storm could kick up (maybe not as big as it did but enough to get attention) so she knew she just had to tweak the right nerve.

I see little true sexism in games, certainly no more then any other media and disagreed with her cherry picked examples but now so many people had a go at her, she can push her biased view on everyone knowing she will get far more publicity then she deserves.

As Jim said, you only have yourselves to blame and you damn well know who you are.

Makes me quite pleased the Save City of Heroes stuff is being directed and supported by people who at least have some sense rather then people who get furious at literally anything.

She (Anita "Straw Feminist" Sarkeesian) knew that feminism is not popular. She knew she would have trolls, and she highlighted the worst of the trolls. She could have blocked the comments from the start if she wanted. I'm gone make it easy: We can't have an intellectuelll debate with Anita "Straw Feminist" Sarkeesian (her new name) because she don't want it. There would just not be some much hate aganst her if she was not a crybaby. She is a easy to hate Straw Feminist & Punchingbag.

PS. Jim, STOP SAYING "YOU". THE TROLLS ARE THE MINORITY.

Someone still uses logic in this world T_T. I got something in the eye.

Zombie_Moogle:The whole situation confuses me.That flood of hate mail seemed to hit her almost simultaneously. Why then? Why all at once? What happened before her kickstarter to get her enough publicity to catch the eye of every troll & misogynist on the internet? She'd been doing her podcast for a while before now. Maybe I'm missing something here, but I don't understand how she caught all their attention so quickly.To top that off, why the rage at all? I've checked out her series; there's plenty to legitimately criticize. A simple response of disagreement would have been a much more constructive & successful approach. You might have found people agreeing with you, or maybe even learned something to change your own mind